Catnip – I just read an article that I posted at pff that might be of interest to you – especially as I note the importance of lactobacilli in the glutathione and selenium metabolism. Might be of some dietary import to you.

2. Thanks, lucid. I’ll check it out. I’ve found out recently that I shouldn’t eat beans, processed meat, tomatoes (which I knew about) or anything that promises to “boost” the immune system (since that would encourage more attacks on my healthy cells because lupus is an auto-immune disorder). I got that info from reputable lupus info sites so I’m going to make some adjustments.

The article is on AIDS, but it applies. I draw a connection to ‘auto-immune’ diseases because one sees similar patterns in low glutathione and selenium levels that would suggest that they aren’t actually auto-immune, but their root cause lies in a distinct lack of intestinal flora that inhibits the natural metabolism of anti-oxidants in the body. I know with Lupus this is a long noted problem. Perhaps try adding some probiotics to your diet? Anyhow, just thought of you when I posted. :)

Thanks for that link on Activia, Catnip …. someone I know buys it all the time ….

Re the debate, Hillary uses the Rightwing claim that those without Insurance coverage are just too selfish to buy one for themselves. So, her program will force everyone to buy a policy. This system has gone into effect in Mass, it was Mitch Romney’s idea, afaik. People are now being fined BECAUSE they can’t afford to buy a policy. Iow, she punishes people for being too poor to buy a health insurance policy.

I can’t say how much this upsets me …. how often many of us have had to fight against this claim with rightwingers who claim that anyone who is sick will get treatment in the US. Not true, they have to wait until their condition is an emergency, then they cannot be turned away from the ER, however the bills will come later. Rightwingers like to pretend it is free to those who have to go to emergency because they have no coverage.

Hillary helps with this fairy tale by claiming that at least 20% of those without coverage, could if they were not so selfish and she’s going to make them pay, either fines or buy a policy.

Easy to tell who she’s getting donations from for her campaign … what a little rightwinger she is ….

Glad Obama slammed her on that point ….. he didn’t go far enough, he should have pointed out how rightwing her claims are …

In 40 years he has done shit for the nation but appease R presidents and be a conservative who bleats to feed the poor while shafting people from the cloakroom.

Sad to say nothing we get will be good. The entire move to do ANYTHING about helth care is to relieve businesses long term, as more and more have signaled they wish to dispense with providing health care AND philanthropy is more and more unable to cover the huge gaps for the worst catastrphic illnesses, Cancer for one.

And to long term bail out insurance companies, in dire straits due to decades of fiduciary malfeasance. Serial bad investors, unable to protect a critical support system/business, always an eye on the profit… and how best to lose the farm.

So very fucked on the Healthcare , because (If it wouldn’t kill people within what we ridiculously call our health care ‘System” ****never mind those dying without it…***) …But I’d say either Nationalize it paid wholly out of the federal budget or let them chuck off any pretense of employment or gov provided care WITHOUT mandates, tear up all the State Hack-laden Hospital, Health, and Insurance Commissions that lock down competition and You damn sure would see smaller co-ops of 10,000 member groups forming springing for the services of primary care and a handful of surgeons…

Right now we have the WORST of opposing paradigms…neither social nor market based…The benefits accrue inordinately to a political class whether wearing white coats, suit and tie, or are the presently valuable economic functionaries actually laying in the bed…

The majority of individuals we used to see as “people” and once called “patients” are now viewed as little more than billable gastrointesinal tubes from mouth to ass which just happens to sustain the particular anatomical niche market where one plies ones trade…… Some Customerization. Hardly a laudable life.

Fuck it, issue everyone a box of bandaids, a manual on how to build your own defibrillator out of jumper cables and a car battery, and outsource the Administration of advanced care to Canada and the UK….Seriously, get some people involved who actually know what the fuck they’re doing…And I’m only half joking about it…Christ if you can sign international treaties on Trade and Defense, why not?

[T]he sad truth of the United States Senate is that it’s a lot easier to stop something from happening than to make something happen. And right now, Republicans are using their 49 seats like a roadblock, stopping the change that voters all across this country demanded.The answer isn’t to get frustrated at our leaders, it’s to give Senate Democrats the reinforcements they need.

No organization is doing more to make sure that Democrats can win the seats needed to expand our one-seat Senate majority than the good folks at the DSCC, and they’ve got a monthly fundraising goal they have to meet in order to get it done.

Here’s to BIG MAJORITIES. We know they will get so much done. Don’t be frustrated hapless little voter: Better days are coming.

well because we still have small dairies around here, some people are quietly buying it directly from the producers.

Probably soon to be the focus of congressional hearings with Waxman and Conyers bearing down. Both shaking their facial waggles over it… Funny how it is never about Bush (the big news today is Did Clemens LIE!!!!?????)

The raw milk prohibition is ridiculous and affects cheese importation as well.

I used to buy raw milk in Pike Place Market in Seattle in the 70’s. Had no idea it was forbidden since. Raw cream, too. This was pre (or nascent) Starbucks days, so I put it in my Medaglia d’Oro coffee, which Franny Glass turned me onto.

Oh, did anyone feel the impact of all Starbucks closing for 3 hours yesterday? I have always thought the current coffee business a bunch of nonsense. Just from a practical POV. There are plenty of excellent whole beans, of which you can buy a pound, for just double for what you pay for a single cup at a coffee shop. It’s easy to stay under $5/lb. and have great coffee. And you don’t have to call yourself a barrista, either.

I’m not a coffee drinker but I buy free trade beans from a local Ten Thousand Villages store as xmas gifts when I can afford it. – a habit I started back in the day before other stores finally added fair trade products to their shelves.

Best coffee I ever had though (when I did drink the stuff for about 5 years) was in Jamaica – Blue Mountain with sweet cream. What a way to start the day.

All sorts of odd thoughts are popping in my head today, in addition to an inexpicable replay of the “Bonanza” theme song. Apropos of nothing, I remembered the little plastic “meals” that one served as a girl child on one’s homemaker-training dish sets. There is an existing photograph of myself, pouring tea, at a fake tea-party, for my younger brother.

In an on camera interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Rep. John Lewis — one of the most influential African-American members in Congress — has said he will support Obama as a superdelegate. Congressman Lewis had endorsed Clinton last year, but says that Obama’s candidacy is a “movement and something in American politics that cannot be ignored.”

Lewis has said his decision to change from Clinton to Obama was harder then his march across the bridge in Selma 43 years ago when he was beaten and bloodied by Alabama State Troopers.

Lewis tells NBC’s Andrea Mitchell he has put a call into Senator Clinton but has not yet informed her of his decision and has not yet told Senator Obama.

Adding one to Obama’s superdelegate total, and subtracting one from Clinton, the superdelegate count is now Clinton 255 and Obama 201.

I am more and more removing myself from national level discussion topics, but, for the moment, what an expedient way to attempt to diminish the Selma Montgomery march and equate it with an ELECTION.

When a friend stayed here for 15 months during the 00/01 dot com housing crunch, she just could nto stand the little systems, Melitta and or stove top.

She bought a 110.00 electric Melitta cofee grinder and coffee maker thing. After she left I wrapped it in plastic and stored it. I did get it out a couple of years ago for some reason. It had stopped working…

Dominick Dunnesque, I know, but extensive coverage with victim impact statements today in Ohio for killer Bobby Cutts….( black cop, ~clean cut/assimilated~ was much of his defense in the murder of pregnant white girlfriend to duck the child suppport) …

the bacteria eats all the lactose, so yogurt ought to be OK, catnip. i’m mildly lactose intolerant myself, but manage the yoghurt and most harder cheeses well enough (the harder the cheese, the lower the lactose level).

interestingly enough, my dad, who is also lactose intolerant, found that strauss milk (a local grass fed organic creamery in marin IIRC) didn’t give him any digestive trouble. which has him wondering out loud whether it’s even the lactose that upsets his stomach, or all the other evil crap byproducts of industrial dairies.

the italian espresso makers are great, too (although the smell of burning coffee grounds and rubber is awful if one forgets that it’s boiling on the stove, and boils off all the water). i’m happiest with a plain old coffee press, tho.

Main Outcome Measure Number of pregnancy-associated deaths, defined as death from any cause during pregnancy or within 1 year of delivery or pregnancy termination, by source of data and cause of death.

Results A total of 247 pregnancy-associated deaths were ascertained. Twenty-seven percent (n = 67) were identified through cause-of-death information obtained from death certificates, 70% (n = 174) through linkage of death records with birth and fetal death records, and 47% (n = 116) through review of medical examiner records. Homicide was the leading cause of pregnancy-associated death (n = 50; 20%), and cardiovascular disorders were the second-leading cause (n = 48; 19%).

Conclusions In this Maryland sample, comprehensive identification of pregnancy-associated deaths was accomplished only after collecting information from multiple sources and including all deaths occurring up to 1 year after delivery or pregnacy termination. This enhanced pregnancy mortality surveillance led to the disturbing finding that a pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause. By broadening pregnancy mortality to include all possible causes, previously neglected factors may assume increased importance in prenatal and postpartum care.

Joe Lents hasn’t made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.

That’s when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents’ mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.

“If you’re going to take my house away from me, you better own the note,” said Lents, 63, the former chief executive officer of a now-defunct voice recognition software company.

Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into securities and the companies that collect monthly payments haven’t been able to prove they own the mortgages. The confusion is another headache for U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as he revises rules for packaging mortgages into securities.

“I think it’s going to become pretty hairy,” said Josh Rosner, managing director at the New York-based investment research firm Graham Fisher & Co. “Regulators appear to have ignored this, given the size and scope of the problem.”

More than $2.1 trillion, or 19 percent, of outstanding mortgages have been bundled into securities by private banks, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a Bethesda, Md.-based industry newsletter. Those loans may be sold several times before they land in a security.

Shortcuts Taken With Paperwork

Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom from 2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn’t always properly completed, said Alan White, assistant professor at Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Ind.

“Loans were mass produced and short cuts were taken,” White said. “A lot of the paperwork is done in the name of the original lender and a lot of the original lenders aren’t around anymore.”

More than 100 mortgage companies stopped making loans, closed or were sold last year, according to Bloomberg data.

Oh, and on Buckley, according to the tribute on All Things Considered this afternoon, he was a giant among men and saved the Republican party from the “fringe”. I shit you not … they actually said that.

Above all, his son Christopher Buckley recalled Wednesday, William Buckley sought to make it respectable to be a conservative.

“He drove out the kooks of the movement,” Christopher Buckley said. “He separated it from the anti-Semites, the isolationists, the John Birchers. He conducted, if you will, a kind of purging of the movement.”

Buckley helped establish Young Americans for Freedom — who formed the core of Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1964. But the movement found a new standard-bearer in Goldwater’s ally, Ronald Reagan, who won the White House 16 years later.

“I have heard it said on many occasions — if there hadn’t been a Bill Buckley, there would have been no Goldwater — and if no Goldwater, then no Reagan,” Christopher Buckley said.

William Buckley later regretted some of his positions — such as his unyielding opposition in the mid-1960s to landmark voting rights bills. But Buckley took pride in seeing his influence spread as the modern conservative movement took hold.

The only thing I will say for that vile racist homophobe is that he was at least willing to have actual leftists and liberals on his show to debate. That’s about the only nice thing I have to say about him. I hope that he had to confront the knowledge that all of those sacraments didn’t mean shit and he was just ENDED. No pearly gates, no forgiveness, no cashing in the chips of all of those Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers. Just worms and dirt.

“He drove out the kooks of the movement,” Christopher Buckley said. “He separated it from the anti-Semites, the isolationists, the John Birchers. He conducted, if you will, a kind of purging of the movement.”

THIS IS THE PARTY LINE…

I swear as the undertaking staff were taping Buckley’s ankles together so he did not flop over the gurney, they were devising this…

Paul Gigot prattled the same scheisse thisafternoon on Lehrer.

******

And yes right… any Greatest Election of Our Lives (which is all of them) is the same as the Selma, Edmund Pettus Bridge “incident”.

And yes right… any Greatest Election of Our Lives (which is all of them) is the same as the Selma, Edmund Pettus Bridge “incident”.

I think he meant it was an easier decision to make, not that it was “easier”.

Marching across the bridge in Selma wasn’t a tough choice for Lewis 43 years ago. He had already been through more beatings and jailings than you could count. Now in Selma you had national attention. So it was “easy” to do it.

On the other hand, he had to make the choice to withdraw his support for Hillary and as a southerner Lewis is being gallant about it. He’s trying not to hurt Hillary’s feelings.

Seems admirable to me. The same guy who could go to jail in the redneck south and risked getting killed finds it hard to be rude to a woman who’s also his friend.

My state licenses dairies for raw milk, maybe your state does too. There aren’t many of them, and the license is for on premise sale, not retail, (although that doesn’t exclude mail-orders on cheese and the one local to me delivers frozen milk to a local farmers market, have to pick up the fresh at the farm). Some of them use a form of community supported agriculture, contractual ageements between the purchaser and the dairy. time share on a goat!

“This business of Ralph Nader being a spoiler — you know, in any three-way race, two of the three are going to be spoilers,” Bloomberg said. “Come on. Everybody’s got a right to do it — you’re not spoiling anything.”

“If people want to vote for you, let them vote for you, and why shouldn’t they?” he added.

Asked Monday whether it’s too late for third-party candidates to be entering the race, Bloomberg gave a long answer that showed he is well-informed about the intricacies of ballot access rules.

“It’s getting close to being too late,” Bloomberg said Monday. “It would take a lot of money, which Ralph Nader doesn’t have, to get on all the ballots … some states make it difficult, some states make it easier.”

Still, he said, Nader has every right to try.

“I’ve just never understood why, just because you’re a member of a party, you have special rights,” Bloomberg said. “That’s not the civics that I learned in junior high school, and if Ralph Nader wants to run, good luck to him.”

“I’ve got one of these incontinence products — albeit a new one, not the ones that tend to appear at committee — on my desk and I’m really giving this matter very serious contemplation,” Smitherman told a group of wide-eyed reporters.

I’m trying to think of a witty comment on this but it’s really impossible to top just quoting it :)

Yeah. I was just watching it on MSNBC. I got the sense that he was struggling to spare Hillary’s feelings by being hyperbolic.

Anyway, it must be pretty weird to see the first black man on the verge of becoming president when only 40 years ago they set a bus on fire just because you were sitting next to a couple of white people.

And I forgot to mention that I’m lactose intolerant anyway, so raw milk wouldn’t be an option.

Actually many people who have been diagnosed lactose intolerant are only allergic to pasteurization. You should maybe try it. In the US one can usually get raw milk products directly from organic farms, or ‘buy in’ to a cow and have the products delivered within the same state. Dunno if that’s possible in Canada.

The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of Israel’s High Court when it recently authorized severe collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity (hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized life).

The same line of defense is common with regard to some of Washington’s past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing — so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at self-justification.

To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S. atrocities typically fall into the third category. Thus, when Israel destroys Gaza’s power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot reach hospitals. And when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the al-Shifa plant, it was obvious that it would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch immediately informed him of this, providing details; nevertheless, he and his advisers did not intend to kill specific people among those who would inevitably die when half the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed in a poor African country that could not replenish them.

Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by Araboushim in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather differently.

If, for a moment, we can adopt the perspective of the world, we might ask which criminals are “wanted the world over.”

NSFW: VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard who was court-martialed, psychologist Philip Zimbardo had access to many of the images of abuse that were taken by the guards themselves. For a presentation at the TED conference in Monterey, California, Zimbardo assembled some of these pictures into a short video. Wired.com obtained the video from Zimbardo’s talk, and is publishing some of the stills from that video here. Many of the images are explicit and gruesome, depicting nudity, degradation, simulated sex acts and guards posing with decaying corpses. Viewer discretion is advised.

What I like about Wm F Buckley is that he actually read books and played the harpsichord. Also, he wrote a few amusing trashy novels, such as Saving the Queen.

I also like the story I heard from a woman who was apartment-sitting in a posh NYC building in the 1970s. Unbeknownst to her, she was on Buckley’s floor and he had seen her going in and out. One evening she heard a buzz at the door, and she opened the door to see Buckley in a dressing gown, bearing a shaker full of martinis. He was mellifluously charming and she invited him in. She said he was a wonderful conversationalist and his martinis were fantastic.

When his martinis were done, he went back to his apartment.

Tales of NYC.

Charming as he may have been, though, Buckley was a certfiable Catholic Whacko.

It is incomprehensible that The Nation magazine endorsed Obama after making the following statement. “This magazine has been critical of the senator from Illinois for his closeness to Wall Street; his unwillingness to lay out an ambitious progressive agenda on healthcare, housing and other domestic policy issues; and for post-partisan rhetoric that seems to ignore the manifest failure of conservatism over these past seven years.”

If The Nation has so many qualms about Obama, why endorse him at all? The editors could have simply made a statement of non-support for Obama or Clinton. The sad plight of progressives is all too obvious. “While his rhetoric about ‘unity’ can be troubling, it also embodies a savvy strategy to redefine the center of American politics and build a coalition by reaching out to independent and Republican voters disgruntled and disgusted with what the Bush era has wrought.” The Nation should explain to readers why Democrats ought to “redefine the center” with independents and Republicans instead of having their own agenda and fighting to make it a reality.

If even The Nation bows down in thrall of the over hyped “center,” then all hope for true change is gone. In other words, capitulation is the order of the day, and Obama makes it more palatable than Hillary Clinton does.
…
The stampede to Obama reveals the emptiness of the Democratic left. They are every bit as cynical as the man they support. They want a seat at the table. They don’t really care what is decided at that table as long as they are included. Pro-war, anti-war, who cares? Just spell the name right on the White House invitation and let the triangulation begin.

Just a brief reminder (the overall thread ran about 103 comments) as to why I’ll be packing it all up and moving to rural Alabama or something in the next month. Might as well cut to the chase, don’t you think ?

Is anyone besides me hesitant about going to an anti-war march next time for fear of being unwittingly drafted into the Obama Adoration League ? Because I have to say that I really, really fucking don’t want that. [scowl]

yes it has. I was working on an immigration project which took up a large chuck of my time, until the primary fever struck my partners, especially the Obama bug. You know how it is with bloggers, if the issue is not sexy, move on. So now the immigration project is on hold.

Actually many people who have been diagnosed lactose intolerant are only allergic to pasteurization

I had no idea you could be allergic to pasteurization. Canadian law is pretty explicit on the issue of raw milk though. Via wiki:

The sale of raw milk directly to consumers is prohibited in Canada[3] under the Food and Drug Regulations since 1991.

Section B.08.002.2 (1)
“ no person shall sell the normal lacteal secretion obtained from the mammary gland of the cow, genus Bos, or of any other animal, or sell a dairy product made with any such secretion, unless the secretion or dairy product has been pasteurized by being held at a temperature and for a period that ensure the reduction of the alkaline phosphatase activity so as to meet the tolerances specified in official method MFO-3, Determination of Phosphatase Activity in Dairy Products, dated November 30, 1981.[4] ”

However, like the United States, Canada permits the sale of raw milk cheeses that are aged for at least 60 days.

Did I mention that I saw a woman offering lacteal secretions her baby the other day? :)

86. On pandering to the Repubs and Independents – Canada’s current minority gov’t is led by the Conservative party which definitely doesn’t want to see NAFTA renegotiated – thus Obama’s secret reassurances.

This is also the same gov’t that gave away $1 billion to the US as a consolation prize for finally ending the years of fights over the softwood lumber dispute. Our lumber industry has been decimated as a result of that conflict and that giveaway.

Our trade deals are serious business up here to those in power so, no doubt, that story was leaked as a warning to the Democrats after what we witnessed last nite at the debate.

Hilarious. DD writes a diary about the Clintons’ narcissism (and finally admits he’s just a tool) and the first comments (that seem to go on forever) are all about whether or not those commenters are boomers. Ummm…”narcissism”, anyone?

In which I actually link to shit that links to shit that makes a scientifically valid point, that really can’t be refuted… and, no – not silence – indignation and pretend elitism. ‘You’re an idiot’!!!!!!

How can I make that bigger !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey dude, you want to back that up?

NO!!!!!!! YOU SUCK!!!!

I asked politely, twice.

Seriously, I can google a zillion articles disputing myself on the thread, but all of them are seriously flawed – and precisely ripped to threads by the two things I linked to.

It will no doubt be conveniently forgotten that Buckley wanted everyone with AIDS to be given a tatoo identifying them as having the disease. Some “social moderate.”

IMHO, Buckley’s feat was to take the opinions normally expressed by the gansterish, radical right and give them a patina of intellectual respectability by couching them in a baroque, fey prose style that utilized words no one knew the meaning of (himself occasionally included, I suspect). He also liked to coin clunky neologisms that, fortunately, never made it into the public realm. I’ve always suspected that National Review (which someone who had worked there once described as the only prominent magazine never to have had a heyday) was an operation the CIA funded in violation of its charter (no operations to be conducted in the United States). They gave money to keep magazines like Partisan Review going, so it’s hard to believe they didn’t also do this with one founded and run by an alumnus. It was from its inception a sleazy rag that placed itself on the side of the worst elements in American society (pro-Joe McCarthy/HUAC/segregation), and once the civil rights movement got going became an apologist for the various White Citizens Councils (think the KKK with suits and ties). Buckley himself leaves behind a small amount of only occastionally clever, insubstantial writings that can barely be discerned in the oceans of dreck he would simply dictate into a tape recorder and have published without reworking.

Buckley’s feat was to take the opinions normally expressed by the gansterish, radical right and give them a patina of intellectual respectability by couching them in a baroque, fey prose style that utilized words no one knew the meaning of (himself occasionally included, I suspect).

And his son is following in his footsteps with a pro social security privitization “novel”.

The erudite and civil debates that Buckley famously engaged in with the likes of Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky are about as far removed as possible from the shallow, anti-intellectual screeching found in today’s National Review from the likes of Kathryn Jean Lopez, Jonah Goldberg and editor Rich Lowry.

I never saw the Buckley v. Vidal contretemps, which took place at the party conventions and on Election Night 1968, but I do remember seeing some of the highlights quoted in news stories. At the GOP convention (held a few weeks before the disastrous Dem convention in Chicago), Buckley referred to Vidal as “an author of perverted Hollywood prose,” while GV called Buckley “the Marie Antoinette of the right wing” (all quotes are from memory). During the Great Chicago Police Riot, Buckley apparently made some statement comparing the victims of this assault to the Nazis, whereupon Vidal said “as far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi is yourself.” Whereupon Buckley said “listen, you g-damned queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll punch you in the g-damned mouth.”

I saw the Buckley/Galbraith Traveling Show on a number of occasions. Henry Fairlie, one of the old New Republic hands who predated the Martin Peretz takeover, wrote a devastating takedown of Buckley sometime back in the early-mid 80s for TNR, and in referencing this tired act by JKG and WFB said “why don’t they just go out in the schoolyard and pull each others’ braids?” A more apt comparison could not have been made.

Re the Buckley/Galbraith friendship, he was also great pals with Murray Kempton. Dwight Macdonald was also charmed by Buckley. Being genial and disarming people with his wit and generosity was doubtless part of his job.

Buckley’s alleged Cleaning Out The Temple re the conservative movement was always bogus. He wouldn’t have truck with the Birchers and the KKK simply because they were such obvious louts. He advocated substantially the same policies they did, he just did it in a less obnoxious manner. And for over 20 years he gave Joseph Sobran a home in the National Review, in spite of the man’s scabrous, anti-Semitism (he did eventually fire him). This wikipedia entry on Sobran gives some details, and is also useful for its portrayal of the sort of nutcase Buckley so frequently associated with and/or mentored througout they years. I don’t use the word “nutcase” lightly either, Buckley’s magazine was home to a number of writers of dubious sanity, including his late brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell, Jr.

Thanks for that clip. Nice to see someone emphasize some of WFB’s more obnoxious views. Re the martinis, I’ve also seen it suggested over the years that Buckley was known to imbibe tee many martoonis, as well as multiple bottles of wine at dinner. Some of the photos that are being used today suggest someone very well oiled.

reprehensible politics aside, i have to thank buckley for completely turning me off conservative politics in my sophomore year in college. that year, i decided to get political magazines from across the spectrum (or what i thought was the spectrum, at the time; i think time was my “liberal” mag, LOL) to work out for myself where i actually found myself on that spectrum.

after a couple months of reading buckley’s mag, refreshingly open about what conservatives thought about the world, i ran screaming the other way, and haven’t looked back.

so he helped me out in that regard, not-so-crypto-fascist that he was.

It was Buckley who also vampd up the ‘we must run the leftists out of academia’ crap. In the early ’90’s his foundation was giving out serious dough to right wing campus groups to bring in prominant conservative speakers like Schlafly, D’Sousa and himself. Because of the money, these nutcases had a disproportionate voice on campus. In the case of my particular school, they got a Quaker institution to break with its own charter & start flying an American flag over the Administration building.

I guess about 20 years ago now, I was reading thru the current New Yorker and landed on a “thing” by Buckley, on sailing. I have no idea why I did not just steam on by… but instead read it.

As I got hotter and hotter at the tone of the damned piece… he was always such an asshole and in this piece there was no entertainment value, unlike Firing Line, just condescension… so I dropped a handwritten note to the New Yorker asking that if they keep him in the line up, to at least get something of value from him.

Something like that. And they actually wrote me back a slightly nasty note. Not the only time I wtote them and not the only time they had an attitude in reply.

Buckley actually started doing that back in the 1950s. In those days, the ability of a tenured professor to speak his or her mind came under attack from the McCarthyite lynch mob, of which Buckley was a enthusiastic member. His targets were pretty much limited to faculty members of Ivy League schools (all-male in those days), their sister women’s colleges like Smith, Barnard, Vassar, etc., and such toney smaller colleges as Bennington, Williams, Colgate, et al. What he and one of his odious sisters (I think the one who married Bozell) tried then was to organize a boycott wherein alumni would stop donating money until certain ideologically unpure professors were fired. The campaign was a resounding flop. I believe a number of the schools actually saw alumni donations increase appreciably in total dollar amounts (though there may have been a slight decrease in the actual number of donations). They abandoned it when they realized it was having the opposite effect that had been hoped for.

Some other things you won’t probably won’t be reading in the Buckley obits is that he didn’t admit to having been a CIA agent until the early 1970s, and only then because his former boss and very close friend E. Howard Hunt was so much in the news. WFB was Hunt’s right-hand man in Mexico City in the early 1950, and they were close enough for Buckley to have been godfather to a couple of Hunt’s children. Buckley has always been very slippery about when he left the agency, I believe when outed he claimed only to have worked there for about 18 months, but in recent years when writing about the Plame matter, he discussed still having been an agent in the late Eisenhower years, which of course means he would have been a spook at the time he published both his book on Joe McCarthy and God And Man At Yale, as well as the years when he got National Review up and running. I think it’s unlikely he ever left the agency, and like Stewart Alsop, Peter Matthiesson, and others, simply posed as a journalist and diplomat (he was some sort of US delegate to the UN in the late Nixon administration) for his undercover work. If this is true, and I think it highly likely, then his entire career may be seen at least in part as a CIA operation to purge the conservative wing of the GOP of its isolationist bloc (still very significant in the late 40s and early 50s) and make it more acceptable to the apparatuses of the National Security State (Pentagon, military industry, spook agencies, FBI).

So.

At the age of 86, Noam Chomsky remains as active as ever in his work as a world-renowned political dissident and pioneering linguist. He has also opened a new chapter in his life, recently celebrating a one-year anniversary with his new wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, his second marriage. Chomsky discusses the joys of newfound love and why it is a "pri […]

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. "[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege," Chomsky says. "Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just b […]

Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

Former Iraqi War general David Petraeus is pleading guilty to mishandling classified information, apparently avoiding an embarrassing trial that would have included his affair with Paula Broadwell, according to documents…Click to Continue »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned a joint session of Congress on Tuesday that a potential deal with Iran will not prevent the country from securing nuclear weapons, threatening “the…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bipartisan talks on a bill to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress are "stuck" over Democratic demands, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance said on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday against accepting a nuclear deal with Iran that would be a "countdown to a potential nuclear nightmare" by a country that "will always be an enemy of America".

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner cleared the way for a vote as soon as Tuesday on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year, dealing a blow to conservative Republicans who wanted to include language blocking President Barack Obama's immigration actions.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have violated federal records laws by using a personal email account for all of her work messages, the New York Times reported on Monday.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.